And All For One
by Basser
Summary: When Sherlock was twelve, his best friend was a cat.


**A/N: **_Wrote this up in a fit of boredom the other night, found it today and decided to post it. Takes place within my Can't Rewind Now headcanon. Sherlock's childhood is just such an endless well of angst and drama, haha._

* * *

**««**

The groundskeeper's cat gave birth in the spring.

At the time Sherlock hadn't been particularly interested - it was only a cat, after all, and he fancied his time a bit too valuable to waste following a dumb animal about the grounds watching it care for its young. Moreover he had school work to complete, and experiments to run, and was just generally far too busy to bother with a bunch of kittens.

And then Father came home.

Sherlock _hated_ it when Father took holidays at the manor. The situation wouldn't be nearly so bad if Mycroft were home as well, but the stupid git had (yet again) chosen to remain at Cambridge over the mid-term break rather than make the trip out to the family's country estate. So Sherlock was left to fend for himself, entirely alone save for the servants, his mother (who had been in one of her bleak periods for well over a month now and refused to emerge from her quarters) and Siger Holmes.

Remaining anywhere near the manor itself was not a sensible option when Siger was home. _Far_ too many opportunities for Sherlock to get himself into trouble - vases and paintings and priceless antiques all breakable and left out in the open to be either accidentally knocked over or, worse, picked up and studied without thinking through the consequences of being caught touching a hundred-thousand-pound trinket. No, Sherlock really had no choice but to make himself scarce.

So he spent his days wandering the grounds instead. Nothing he could muck up out there, and Father might very well simply forget he even existed so long as he managed to stay out of sight of the study's windows.

It was a foggy English morning when he found himself meandering around near the stable area, letting his mind wander as it would and wondering vaguely if it would be worthwhile to make his way back to the kitchens for breakfast. A mewling sound caught his attention, and he stopped short to peer sidelong into the semi-darkened rows of stalls he'd been walking past. There was a shuffling, another pitiful mew, the sound of a horse snorting and shifting its hooves in agitation.

He glanced around and, seeing no staff anywhere near (whom he could have enlisted to deal with the problem instead), Sherlock huffed slightly to himself and ventured into the main stable. It smelled strongly of horse manure, making him wrinkle his nose, and the bloody great beasts were all either snuffling in their sleep or turning to watch him curiously with the expectation of food. Pointless; they should all have known perfectly well by now that they'd never get anything from _him_. Sherlock had been nursing a grudge against the entirety of horsekind ever since he'd been bitten by his brother's gelding at the age of six.

Scowling faintly with annoyance at the proximity to so many disgusting equines Sherlock quickly glanced into each stall as he passed. Finally at the third stall from the last he looked in to find an aging yellow mare standing stock-still with her ears laid back, snorting as she flicked her tail in anger. At her feet was a loudly-mewling bundle of fur.

Sherlock eyed the horse warily for a moment, then crouched down to peer between the slats of the stall door. One of the kittens from the cat's litter was huddled near the horse's front hooves, looking lost and pitiful. The cat looked up at Sherlock's movement with a frightened hiss, causing the horse to whinny in alarm. Sherlock flinched at the too-loud sound and hunched his shoulders up around his ears. _God_ he hated horses.

The kitten seemed to hold a similar sentiment - it jumped and scuttled quickly away from the mare's lifting hooves, mewling all the while. Sherlock frowned, wondering why the stupid animal didn't simply remove itself from the dangerous area, then realised the problem: the bottom slat on the stall door was too high for the tiny kitten to climb over. It had likely snuck in when one of the stable hands put the horse away last night and ended up trapped. Meaning, of course, that the bloody thing had been stuck in there all night. The fact that it hadn't been trampled yet was a miracle.

He glanced up at the mare again - agitated, but not looking quite inclined to violence yet - and carefully reached an arm between the slats of the stall door toward the cat. It hunched up its back and hissed at him again. Above them the horse whickered in fear.

"Shut _up_ you stupid furball," Sherlock growled quietly to the cat. "You're making her think you're a snake."

Talking to a kitten was, in retrospect, a completely moronic thing to do; but considering no one else was around Sherlock decided he didn't care. It seemed to have been the right course of action, anyway, because the animal flicked its ears forward and mewled curiously at him.

"Yes, I'm a human," Sherlock informed it. "The same sort of thing that brings you food. Now come over here and let me grab you before you're flattened by an angry horse."

The cat seemed to consider him for a moment, indecisive as to which was the greater threat, but the horse snorted again with a stamp of her hoof and the kitten shot forward toward the stall door with a pitiful mew. Sherlock snatched it up the second it was within arm's reach, then stood up and backed quickly away from the mare's stall with the cat clutched protectively against his chest.

"Er… Master Holmes?" a voice called from the end of the stable hall. Sherlock looked over to see one of the stable hands watching him curiously, mucking rake in one hand and a bucket in the other.

Sherlock cleared his throat and tucked the squirming kitten into the folds of his slightly overlarge jumper (one of Mycroft's , actually- he'd gotten acid on his usual pullover during the last round of oxidation experiments) where it would hopefully go unnoticed in the dim light of the stable.

"This horse was behaving in an agitated manner," he told the stable hand in an imperious tone. "I thought it might have contracted some sort of prion infection and came to observe it in its death throes."

The young man fixed him with a flat look (all of the stable staff were well aware of Sherlock's aversion to their charges) and, raising an eyebrow, glanced past him to the rapidly-calming yellow mare.

"I'd wager she just got a rat in 'er stall, sir," he explained, trying and failing to avoid sounding exasperated. "Horses don't take well t'little buggers skitterin' about their feet, y'know?"

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively as he turned away from the man. "Well, be sure to inform me if the animal perishes regardless. I'd like to conduct an autopsy."

"O' course, sir," the stable hand drawled in an extremely unimpressed monotone. Sherlock ignored him in favour of walking quickly out of the building. It smelled of horse manure and musty hay, and wanted to get back to the fresh air before his clothes absorbed the scent. Against his chest the kitten was clawing at him through the thick material of Mycroft's jumper.

Once he was a good fifty yards from the stable he stopped and extricated the writhing ball of fur from the knot of fabric it had tangled itself into. He held it aloft - slightly away from his chest to thwart it latching onto him again with its tiny claws - and regarded the animal curiously. It was blinking at him with a pair of seafoam-green eyes set in a longish, delicate face. _(Some sort of siamese ancestry, perhaps… ? Sherlock rather abruptly realised he knew very little about cat breeds and resolved to rectify that as soon as he could safely return to the house.)_ Its fur was striped in a tabby pattern, alternating bands of brown and grey with darker portions of near-black, growing lighter toward the head. The head which, oddly, sported a tuft of cowlicked brown fur sticking straight up from its scalp like a feather.

The tuft, along with the memory of the particular horse he'd found the kitten trapped with, made Sherlock quirk a small, bemused smirk. Not that he particularly _cared_ at all about some dumb animal, of course… but, well… perhaps it would be appropriate to give the cat a title. Just in case he ever needed to refer to it in the future. For convenience's sake.

"Henceforth your name shall be D'Artagnan," he informed the kitten quite seriously, ignoring the fact that he was talking to an animal again. Doing so was no less ridiculous the second time around; but, as before, there was no one nearby to witness his insanity and so he figured it didn't much matter.

D'Artagnan mewled at him, squirming as he tried to get free, and Sherlock rather reluctantly knelt down to set the kitten on the grass.

"Well… run off and do whatever it is cats do I suppose," Sherlock said. For some reason he was feeling a bit disappointed with the knowledge that the animal would no doubt bolt the second he released it. He took his hands away from the soft fur regardless, then straightened back up and watched D'Artagnan expectantly to see where he would go.

Strangely, though, the cat didn't leave. It merely sat down, licked the fur on its back a few times, then looked back up to him with a curious expression. Sherlock frowned to himself.

"Go," he ordered, flapping his hand to indicate the direction it should scamper off in. "Do cat things. Catch mice or something."

D'Artagnan just meowed.

"Well fine then," Sherlock huffed after a few seconds. "If you want to just sit there waiting to get eaten by a hawk then be my guest." He rolled his eyes and tucked his hands into his trouser pockets as he turned to leave.

He'd only gone a few steps before a loud '_mew!_' made him stop short. He glanced down toward his feet. D'Artagnan was following him.

"I believe the term 'dogging my steps' is generally meant to be reserved for the species it refers to," he told the kitten. It meowed again and rubbed up against his leg.

"Well, alright," he conceded after a moment. "I suppose if you'd like to accompany me you're welcome to do so. I'm not really doing anything interesting though, just avoiding the house until Father goes to bed."

D'Artagnan butted against Sherlock's leg again and began to purr.

Despite himself, Sherlock felt his expression soften. After a brief internal debate he bent down and carefully picked up the small kitten to hold it against his chest once more. D'Artagnan purred in his arms, rubbing his face against Sherlock's hand, and Sherlock obligingly patted the tiny animal's head.

"I suppose you're not the _worst_ cat I've ever met," he muttered. D'Artagnan's purring seemed to grow louder at the sound of his voice.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Sherlock smiled.

**««**

Running wasn't allowed in the house.

Sherlock was coming perilously close to breaking that rule as he strode as quickly as possible down the lavish hallway leading away from his father's study. Down the stairs, quick left turn, a right, through the drawing room and he'd be outside. He clenched his fists at his sides and bit the inside of his cheek the entire way.

The second he set foot on the cobblestone path of the back garden he was off like a shot. Fast, _fast_ as he could get away from the manor. He had no idea where he was going. Somewhere nebulously in the direction of his favourite willow tree, probably. That was usually where he ended up.

Sure enough within minutes he was shoving his way through a thick curtain of hanging boughs, smacking leaves aside with enough force to strip them off their branches. One of the thin wisps of wood sliced the side of his hand, but that was fine. It was _good_, really, because it gave him something to focus on besides the maelstrom in his head. He grabbed at the injured limb, pressed his thumb against the cut as he slammed his back against the willow's gnarled trunk and sank down to curl up into a ball.

For the next several minutes he simply focused on breathing. He wasn't crying. He _wasn't._ There were tears, yes, but none had yet escaped from the confines of his eyelids and therefore they didn't count. Crying was for babies. He wasn't a baby. He was _twelve_ for god's sake. And twelve was far too old to ever cry again.

He sat with his face pressed into his knees for an interminable length of time, just listening to the breeze in the willow branches, birds singing somewhere far away and the sound of his own slowly-evening breaths. By and by he became aware of a vague presence at his side. He reluctantly lifted his head and looked around.

There, to his right. A tuft of grass was watching him.

"Oh," Sherlock mumbled after a moment's blank staring at the pair of seafoam eyes peeking out from behind a patch of green stalks. "Hello, D'Artagnan."

With a loud meow the eyes disappeared, and suddenly a set of claws were scrabbling on his arm. The next second his shoulders were being pressed down by the negligible weight of a three-month-old kitten.

"Hey!" Sherlock ducked his head out of the way of D'Artagnan's snuffling inspection of his hair. "Do I look like a climbing post to you?"

D'Artagnan mewled again and bit at one of Sherlock's ears.

"_Ow! _Stop that, you mangy cat, I'm not edible."

He reached up, plucked the kitten from his shoulders and shifted his legs so he could deposit the animal in his lap instead. D'Artagnan immediately began to purr and press up against his hands in hopes of petting.

"Fine, fine," Sherlock grumbled, but there was no real venom to it. He slowly stroked the soft fur of the cat's back as he leant back against the willow tree. It was nearing mid-afternoon, the warm summer sun cast the grounds of the Holmes estate in an idyllic golden light. Silence stretched for several minutes, punctuated by Sherlock's intermittent sniffles (he _hadn't_ cried, really, but his nose was still plugged for some reason) and D'Artagnan's loud purring.

"They're sending me to boarding school next year," Sherlock murmured eventually. D'Artagnan didn't seem to hear him - just rolled over onto his back and nibbled playfully at Sherlock's fingers.

"Ow! _Stop_," he snapped, tapping the kitten lightly on the nose. D'Artagnan blinked up at him and mewled. Despite his dismal mood Sherlock quirked a small smile as he returned to petting the soft fur of the cat's stomach.

"I suppose I should try and bring you some food next time. What do you even eat, anyway? Does the groundskeeper set food out for you or does your family just survive by catching mice?"

D'Artagnan had no answer for him, but that was alright. Sherlock found he was honestly just content to have something to talk to.

"I forgot to do my schoolwork again," he continued, expression falling. His voice settled into a sort of vague resignation. "I _started_ it, of course, but then I had to go to the library to look up information, and I found a book about Jack the Ripper. Still had a few hours before the paper was due so I decided I'd just skim through the first few chapters... and then when I looked up it was already noon and the tutor was here."

He huffed a small sigh and frowned to himself. In his lap the kitten seemed to have fallen into a state of dazed bliss.

"I still don't see why she had to go to Father about it. This is only the second time it's happened since the old tutor quit, that's a few months! I was doing well." He tilted his head back to rest against the willow trunk, blinked up into the sun-speckled canopy of the tree. "Father says I lack self-discipline. Apparently Eton's supposed to help that, I don't know." Another sigh. "At least I'll get to meet more people my own age, I suppose. Maybe I'll make some friends?"

D'Artagnan meowed loudly and batted a lazy paw in the direction of Sherlock's hand.

"You're right, doesn't seem likely," he conceded with a self-depreciating smile. "None of our cousins can stand me... suppose I shouldn't expect school to be much different. Still, perhaps if I just act less... like myself, maybe? I mean plenty of people seem to like _Mycroft_ and he's a massive prat. It must be possible to fool someone into thinking I'm worth being friends with. At least for a little while."

Abruptly the kitten in his lap sprang up and attacked the front of his jumper, only to start flailing around comically when one of his claws became stuck in the fabric. Sherlock smiled and grabbed the animal's tiny paw to untangle it.

"Well," he muttered as he worked - D'Artagnan had somehow managed to catch about five different strands which had all woven around each other - "at the very least I'll always know _you_ approve of me. If only because I'm willing to pet you."

A second later his paw was finally free, and D'Artagnan tumbled out of Sherlock's lap with a loud meow. Struck with an idea Sherlock reached out and retrieved one of the many fallen willow branches littering the ground around them, stripping off all but a single leaf. He dangled the makeshift lure just above the kitten's head. D'Artagnan shot upwards, but Sherlock flicked the bough out of the way just before the animal's paws could close on it.

With an amused grin Sherlock leant forward and rested his chin on one hand, elbow to knee, and swished the willow bough to and fro. D'Artagnan frantically hopped and scrambled after the twirling leaf at the end.

"Here's me then, playing with a kitten," he remarked blandly to himself as he watched the animal scamper about. "How utterly plebeian."

Still, his expression had settled into a fond smile.

"Suppose there's worse ways to waste an afternoon," he admitted after a moment.

D'Artagnan finally caught the willow bough, ate the leaf in one exuberant mouthful, and immediately began sputtering as he tried to spit the foliage out.

Sherlock grinned, trying to hold back his amusement. D'Artagnan rolled onto his back and pawed wildly at his mouth in an attempt to dislodge the flecks of green stuck to his teeth. He blinked up at Sherlock with a pitiful meow.

Finally the boy gave up on maintaining his dignity and burst into laughter.

**««**

It was the last week of summer before the start of the Autumn term. The weather was gorgeous, the first day of school and the beginning of a new life loomed just days away.

And Sherlock was busy looking for a cat.

D'Artagnan had several siblings, all of whom Sherlock had dutifully bequeathed with appropriately-themed titles according to their physicalities or temperaments. Not necessarily their _genders_, as he had no idea how to determine such a thing at a glance (D'Artagnan was the only one of the litter who would suffer being picked up and examined), but being as they were all just dumb animals anyway he supposed it didn't much matter.

He walked past two of said siblings on his way into the main house; the muscular gray brindle had tackled his willowy, black-and-tan sibling to the cobblestones with a playful growl and now they were locked in a vicious scuffle of claws and fur. Neither were D'Artagnan, so Sherlock continued on into the manor.

Hallway after hallway turned up empty, and he eventually came to his brother's room. He poked his head around the slightly-open door and glanced around the tidy space in search of a familiar tuft of brown fur. Highly unlikely the cat would have wandered into the house without being immediately shooed out again, but he had to check.

A loud _'ahem' _caught his attention and Sherlock looked up from his visual inspection of the space under the bed to see Mycroft staring at him. The teenager was seated at his desk with a pen in one hand and what looked like some sort of textbook propped open with the other. Sherlock blinked. Oh. He'd forgotten his brother was home.

"Have you seen D'Artagnan?" he asked the older boy.

Mycroft raised a questioning eyebrow. "D'Artagnan?"

"The brown tabby cat," Sherlock clarified impatiently. "Porthos and Aramis are in the garden and I saw Athos by the pond with Bonacieux but I can't find D'Artagnan anywhere."

Mycroft regarded him blankly for a moment.

"You've named the groundskeeper's cats after characters from _The Three Musketeers_," he eventually remarked in a tone of flat disbelief.

Sherlock's stance stiffened in embarrassment. A second's awkward pause stretched between them before he huffed and fixed his brother with an annoyed scowl.

"Have you seen the cat or not?"

Mycroft rolled his eyes slightly. "I'm sorry, Sherlock, I don't generally make a habit of keeping track of the whereabouts of the staff's pets."

"Right, well thanks for being _useless_," Sherlock snapped.

"Try the Bastille, perhaps?" Mycroft suggested sarcastically as he turned back to his studying. Sherlock glowered at him.

"Just tell me if a brown tabby comes through here."

Mycroft waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder - a wordless _'yes of course'_ - and Sherlock glared at the older boy's back for a moment longer before turning to stalk off down the hall. He still had the kitchens and the servants' quarters to check, and then he'd start looking around the edge of the grounds just in case the cat had gotten lost.

Finding no sign of the kitten indoors he made his way back out to the grounds through a door on the opposite side to the one he'd entered, heading toward a storage shed by one of Mummy's flowerbeds. The cats usually didn't venture into this area - the gardener had treated the soil there with some sort of herbal concoction to keep the moles out, and the cats (as well as Sherlock) hated the smell. It was one of the only places he hadn't checked though, so Sherlock wrinkled his nose against the pungent odour of the mole repellent and half-jogged to the shed.

As he approached he caught sight of a brown, tufted tail sticking out from around the other side of the small building.

"_There_ you are!" Sherlock exclaimed, a ridiculous, relieved grin on his face. He reached the edge of the rough wall and poked his head around it. "What are you doing all the way out here? You stupid... furball..."

His words trailed off. The smile dropped from his face.

D'Artagnan was surrounded by a puddle of dark, stagnant blood. Fur matted slick against his side around a deep gash, nose and teeth stained red. The kitten lay cold and unmoving, wide eyes staring sightlessly at nothing.

"Master Holmes? Did you need somethin' from the shed?"

Footsteps, a pail being set down, the groundskeeper approaching. Sherlock didn't look up. _Couldn't_ look up - his gaze refused to stray from the dead cat at his feet.

"Ah, hell, looks like we got ourselves another fox," the man grumbled as he came up behind Sherlock's frozen form. "Thought I'd got the last o' them damned buggers with the vixen last month! Must have had herself a mate skulkin' about."

Sherlock said nothing. The groundskeeper sighed and knelt down to pluck up the corpse by the tail.

"W-wait," Sherlock spoke up suddenly. He'd never been particularly bothered by dead animals, but for some reason the sight of D'Artagnan hanging stiff and lifeless from the older man's hand was sickening. "I... can I have hi- I mean _it, _that is... c-can I have it?"

He cringed at the broken sentence. Not exactly the most eloquent he'd ever been. It didn't seem to matter though, as the groundskeeper just quirked an amused, slightly quizzical smile down at him.

"What d'ya want a dead cat for?" he asked, raising one greying eyebrow. "If you need more toads for your experimentin' there's plenty round the duck pond, young sir."

Sherlock shook his head. "N-no, I..." he swallowed, casting his mind about for a plausible excuse. "I'd like to study the decomposition rate of mammals, not amphibians. The cat's been, er... d-dead... for less than a day, it would be an ideal test subject."

He clenched his fists at his side and tried not to let the lie show. Apparently it worked, as the man simply shrugged.

"Whatever you like, sir," he said with a bemused shake of his head. "S'pose you'd best have me spare gloves, then. And probably don't want t'be trackin' this round the house, alright?"

"Of course not," Sherlock assured, doing his best to straighten his posture and maintain the imperious tone he usually used when interacting with the staff. He accepted the overlarge set of workgloves the groundskeeper had produced from one of his pockets, tugged them on and practically snatched D'Artagnan out of the man's grip.

Sherlock turned and marched resolutely away, ignoring the semi-sarcastic _'have fun then, young sir'_ called after him. As he passed one of the outlying flower beds he shifted the body in his arms to free up a hand and plucked up a trowel from the damp soil beside a rose bush.

He clutched the dead cat to his chest and headed toward the willow tree.

**««**

Sherlock had never dug a hole in his life.

It was one of those things you simply never realised you hadn't done. Not until you found yourself hacking away at solid dirt with nothing but a trowel and a flattish rock, wondering how something that seemed so _pathetically simple_ could possibly be so difficult. Of course it didn't help that his vision kept blurring, or that his breathing was becoming impaired by a mysteriously-stuffy nose. Didn't let it slow him down, though; just rubbed the back of his forearm across his eyes and set himself to his task with all the strength a scrawny twelve year old could muster.

Finally, _finally_ the hole was big enough. Not all that deep, unfortunately - the twisting roots beneath the willow tree had impeded his progress on that front. He'd collected a few large stones from the stream nearby, though, with the hope that a barrier of solid rock would be enough to deter any scavengers. D'Artagnan was lowered into the makeshift grave (the act somewhat lacking in ceremony as Sherlock's exhausted arms shook and his nose refused to stop running no matter how hard he sniffed) and Sherlock very carefully covered the animal with alternating layers of dirt and stone.

"What are you doing?"

Sherlock didn't look up, too busy fitting the last rock into place on the top of his little burial mound. Despite (or perhaps because of) his lack of response he heard the footsteps of his big brother draw up beside him.

Mycroft was silent for a moment, then sighed. "You found your cat, I take it."

His tone was an impossibly condescending mix of exasperation and vaguely resigned acceptance. This was obviously just the latest in a long string of ridiculous antics he'd been forced to put up with ever since Sherlock had dared to be born and ruin Mycroft's perfect existence as an only child.

Sherlock tensed and fixed the flat stone under his dirt-coated hands with a smoldering glower.

"Go away, Mycroft."

He heard his brother's stance shift as the nineteen year old leant forward slightly to try and see his younger sibling's face. "Are you _crying?_" he asked in quiet disbelief.

Sherlock suddenly snarled; a broken, furious noise. In a flash of blind rage he grabbed up the trowel from beside his leg and whipped around to hurl it at his brother.

"I said _GO AWAY!_" he screamed in Mycroft's direction. The movement of his face let tears leak from his eyes, down his cheeks to track mud in the dirt there. He didn't care. _"JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU SODDING FAT GIT!"_

Mycroft backed away several steps (managing to move his head just in time to avoid taking a trowel to the face) and held his hands up in a gesture of vaguely-alarmed conciliation.

"Calm down, Sherlock, it was only a cat." The teenager was clearly trying to keep his voice free of any sort of judgement, but the impatient scorn leaked through in the way his brows furrowed, the contemptuous tilt of his mouth.

_"Go. Away." _Sherlock repeated, words a frigid growl. Mycroft dropped his hands with a long-suffering sigh.

"Well, at the very least I expect you've learned a valuable lesson about not becoming attached to small animals," the older boy remarked blandly over his shoulder as he turned to walk off. Sherlock had the brief urge to throw a rock at the back of his brother's head, but the teenager had already made it through the willow boughs and out of sight before he could act on the impulse.

He glared after his sibling's retreating back, then turned back to the pile of stones that made up D'Artagnan's grave. He felt like he should say something.

A moment passed, silent but for the shifting of the willow leaves and distant birdsong. Sherlock's eyes remained fixed on the topmost rock.

Eventually he shook his head. Mycroft was right - it was only a stupid cat.

But still, as he turned to leave a phrase flitted unbidden to his mind.

_One for all..._


End file.
